NICK TURNER FIGHT! - Comedy Blaze

*reprinted from DC Comedy 4 Now*



Today I had an interesting email exchange with an "executive" at the mega-huge comedy video site, Comedy Blaze. Enjoy.

From Comedy Blaze:
We are currently building an advisory board for ComedyBlaze looking to recruit a few celebrity comics, actors and entertainment executives. We will compensate them by issuing them with shares (ownership) in ComedyBlaze Inc. Please let me know if you might be interested.
We are also currently closing an investment round for CB with a financial investor. We would like ComedyBlaze to be partly owned and backed by members and industry players. So we are opening up the round to include investment from you or other entertainment folks you may know. I’m happy to pay you a finder’s fee in cash if you introduce us to someone who invests in CB…feel free to forward this message or just call me.
If you don’t have any cash to invest just upload your videos and we’ll pay you.
-Comedy Blaze Guy

Great, let me know when my shares are ready.
-Nick

Nick,
If you are interested please let me know and we can schedule a phone call.
If you have any videos, please upload them.

I was kidding. Since you called me a "celebrity, it sounded monumentally disingenuous.
-Nick

OK, do you have anything you can upload?

I'm afraid that your last email didn't exactly address all of my concerns. I was mostly talking about the lack of sincerity in your first offer. It seemed like you just rolled over it and pitched another effort to gain my sweet uploads. Obviously I think you're great and look forward to a long relationship. I just need confirmation that what I received wasn't entirely a form letter, but an honest commendation of my storied stand-up career. Thank you so much Andrew for the validation that we all crave. It means a great deal to me.
Your friend, Nicky T

There is one thing I am struggling to understand. If you or any artist has uploaded a video to youtube, MySpace or Facebook, why would you not upload it to ComedyBlaze?

I made the site because I thought it was a no brainer. Almost no one bothered to upload anything. So one might say the 50 50 split was of no interest to the artists.

I then offred the CB grand with a cash prize of $1k for the most viewed videos. That seemed to have almost no effect. Now I have increased the CB grand to pay $5k and am hoping that gets someone to not only upload to CB, but also email their contacts attempting to win the prize and get the fair 50 50 deal we give everyone.

I then offered to make the artists owners by allowing them to coinvest in my first financing round. You and others seem to prefer to keep your videos on MySpace where 100% of the revenue will go to newscorp now owned by old man Murdoch and youtube owned by google, the biggest giant of all internet titans.

What at all is cool about those guys so you want them to keep 100% of the money from value you create. I thought artists were either intelligent or had agents to look after their commercial affairs. I am now wondering if I am the retarded one here.

Why would you not upload your sweet vids if they are already on the public web making old billionairs richer?

Well, I'm no marketing guru Andrew, but you problem seems to be the fact that when you upload to Youtube, people may actually SEE the videos. From the desperation in your voice it sounds like there isn't much chance of that happening with Comedy Blaze. From this logic, why wouldn't I just put the videos up on my own site and reap all the financial rewards, of which there will be none, just like Comedy Blaze.
I am impressed with your insistence that I, (celebrity) Nick Turner, come around to your way of thinking. So impressed, in fact, that I will let you answer the question that I have asked you no less than three times already. Why did you refer to me as a celebrity in your initial email? What about me do you know that led you to the conclusion that I was needed in your project? I get that you just told everyone the same thing. I'm sure you have even sent that email out to non-performers. That, my friend, probably has something to do with the mass resistance to your own Newscorp-like empire. But hey, I love your work, and I've been a big fan of yours for a long time. I think what you have done for the world of comedy is certainly commendable.
-Nick

Fair enough.
If you are getting fewer than 200k views it is hard to monetize that. I will aggregate traffic and get to 30M and be one of the biggest entertainment destinations on the web. I am buying a company in LA that manages myspace pages for a large client roster of real celebs. Ironically they will pay me cash to make their CB pages and email directly to their fan lists. That will get me past the current catch 22.

Yeah, I really went slutty on my mass mailer you got, my celebrity friend!

Great, let me know when the Bob Saget videos are up.
-Nick